expected to write a criminology paper when truly abominable things were happening all around me?
I grabbed my phone and sent Cash a text. Miss you, hope the house doesn’t feel too empty without me.
A minute later I got the reply, Don’t worry, I’ll welcome you home in every room when you get back.
Cheeky bugger.
I was in the process of flirting back when a flicker of light outside caught my eye.
My bedroom faced the woods rather than the collection of small cabins behind the mansion. There shouldn’t be any light in the trees now that the sun had set.
Unless someone was out there.
I slipped on my shoes and went onto the veranda, squinting into the gloomy darkness, trying to understand what I was seeing. My senses should have been at their peak right now, the day after a full moon. Scent and hearing were more reliable than sight, but still I should have been able to spot someone standing in the trees without difficulty.
The light had vanished as quickly as it appeared, making me think I must have imagined it.
I was ready to stop looking and go back inside when a pungent waft of sulfur hit me. I wrinkled my nose, and my eyes watered at the suddenness of its arrival.
“Oh God.” I gagged.
The smell was so powerful I could taste it. It coated my tongue like poison. A cold sweat broke out across my skin because the memory of my last encounter with that smell was still fresh in my mind, the woman with her blistered, peeling skin and her limbs all jumbled and wrong.
I ran across the veranda until I reached a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading from the second-floor balcony to the one below and made it to the main floor in record time. I looked around, hoping I might spot someone to drag with me. If it was the woman I’d seen before, I wouldn’t mind having someone else around to back me up, confirming she was real.
And if it wasn’t her, having someone else with me would be more strength against whatever was out there.
The smell was growing fainter, and if I didn’t move now, I might lose my chance.
Argh. I was just going to have to go for it.
I hauled ass for the tree line, running like someone trying to escape, but I needed to find the woman before she vanished. If I could see her again when I was in my human form, I might believe I hadn’t conjured her out of the dark recesses of my imagination.
What was worse, though? A real charred dead woman stalking me, or her being the creation of my messed-up mind? That wasn’t the easiest question to answer.
I was thankful I’d had the foresight to put on shoes before going outside. Not that the twigs and brambles would do much lasting damage to me, but it was still a lot more comfortable to run when your feet weren’t getting torn to shit every few steps.
The sulfur smell got more powerful the farther into the woods I got. I knew I was heading in the direction of the older homestead, a slightly crumbling house used for storage these days and not much else. If she was real, was she hiding there?
Was she something that needed to hide?
I tried to think of a logical explanation for what she might be. She’d smelled human…well, she’d smelled like barbequed human. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. With the brimstone stench and the burnt flesh, there was a lot of stuff to throw me off her true nature.
A fae, maybe? I didn’t have much exposure to the fairy races, only a bog fae who had tried its hand at living in the swamp. Nasty bastard. But nothing like the creatures Secret had told me existed in the world just outside the reach of human eyes and imagination. There were things out there people still wouldn’t believe today, in spite of what humans now knew about the supernatural.
Could this woman be one of those things?
Demon. My brain offered up the alternative, and it was enough to draw me up short and make me think chasing her might not be the best idea.
Demons were something I was woefully unprepared to deal with, and between the smell and the appearance of this woman, I was starting to think she might be exactly what I most feared.
But didn’t demons try to blend in? Wasn’t it their common practice to take over a host body so they could move